Ducking the Issue

Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes, by Carl Barks – I’d been meaning to read some of Barks’s Disney comics, and they’re currently being reprinted in collected volumes. This was the only one the library system had, but there’s also an Uncle Scrooge volume, and A Christmas for Shacktown is coming soon. Lost in the Andes includes some longer adventure yarns, ten-page stories, and one-page gags. Barks was responsible for fleshing out much of Donald Duck’s universe, inventing such characters as Gladstone Gander, Gyro Gearloose, and Scrooge McDuck himself. The DuckTales cartoon was largely based on his work. The stories in this volume are funny, and have rather intricate plots at times. In the title story, Donald is working as a museum janitor when he accidentally discovers that some square rocks are actually square eggs. Trying to track down the source of these eggs, Donald and his nephews travel to Peru and eventually find the hidden village of Plain Awful, where most things are square. The inhabitants speak English in Southern accents and sing “Dixie,” due to an earlier visit by a professor from Birmingham. One of the ten-page stories has Donald and his nephews raising Scrooge’s sunken yacht with ping-pong balls, a method that apparently actually works. These are definitely worth reading, and I look forward to future installments.

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